Emerge- The Heir

by Melissa A. Craven

  “It’s her.”

  “She’s so pretty.”

  “You think she will take students?”

  “Let’s kill her.”

  “Are we supposed to call her your majesty or your grace?”

  “We have to take her unharmed.”

  “I don’t think she likes that.”

  “She so powerful.”

  “She’s dangerous.”

  “She’s coming inside, hurry. Let’s get a good view of the new queen.”

  “She’s not a queen yet.”

  “We answer to no queen.”

  “She’s a princess. The first, first princess in thousands of years.”

  “I love her highlights.”

  “She’s an imposter.”

  “He is looking for her.”

  “Those aren’t just highlights. The old queens had gold and silver hair just like hers. Between that, her power, and that freaky aura she has, there’s no denying her right to the throne.”

  “But there isn’t a throne, is there?”

  “Take her.”

  Allie shook her head, trying to separate what was real from what was phantom. The voices weren’t even the difficult part. Everywhere she looked, she saw eager faces swarming the Sterling Tower lobby, but she also saw faces that weren’t actually there. Hundreds of them. Some spectral, which she was used to seeing, and others were more defined, moving stealthily toward her. But some were so real, she couldn’t decide if they were actually there or not. And the snakes. The floor was covered in writhing black snakes with ruby red eyes. She’d seen those snakes often enough in her dreams. She didn’t need them invading her reality.

  “Allie.” A young girl rushed to greet her. “We’re so happy to have you back,” she said breathlessly. Allie pushed the girl behind her, putting herself between the girl and the man with the assault rifle aimed right at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Allie said, shaking her head, desperately trying to get a grip on her gift.

  “You’ll have to excuse the princess,” Alísun said. “She’s had a hard few days.” She draped her arm around Allie, moving her through the crowd of students gathered to greet her return.

  “Wait.” Allie pulled back. This was how bad rumors would start. She looked certifiably cray-cray, and these kids would be quick to talk. “Can everyone settle down?” she called loudly across the nearly silent room—silent for everyone but Allie. A sea of blinking eyes watched her in surprise when she climbed onto a white lacquered bench against the windows.

  “I’m so sorry.” Allie rubbed her hands across her face, trying to ignore the black-clothed men and women who raced through the front door wielding guns. “We’re all young here,” she said to the crowd. “Every one of you knows what it’s like to have an evolving gift send you straight into crazytown, right?”

  Heads nodded as they began to understand.

  “I’m clairvoyant. Just like my mother and grandmother. All the women of our family have the sight. It manifests differently for each of us. Right now, my visions are swarming all around you guys like bears looking for honey, and I’m the honey. I’m not crazy. I’m just seeing a lot of activity I’m not used to seeing.”

  Allie stood taller, focusing on the here and now, ignoring what was likely not there. It just made her so nervous to think of how easily she could dismiss something as a vision that could be happening right under her nose.

  “We are making big changes here. Everything we’re doing right now will shape the future before us. Not just for those of us standing here today, but for our entire world. Sterling Tower is a difficult place for me to be in right now, but I won’t be leaving again anytime soon. This is where I belong. With all of you. So if you see me acting like a total nut-job, just remember, I’m still learning, too.”

  “I remember when I first started understanding languages I didn't know I could speak,” a young man said with a dimpled smile. "People are drawn to me, like they instinctively know I can understand them. When I was twenty-three, it escalated to this constant tidal wave of people talking in dozens of languages. It was an awful year until I finally learned how to mask my gift.”

  “Growing pains, am I right?” Allie smiled at the crowd. “I’m eager to meet with all of you, but for the foreseeable future, can you come at me in smaller groups?” She laughed. “Just so I can give my full focus to you and not the snakes crawling around on the floor?” Pointing down at the floor, she grimaced. “Why do you think I’m way up here on this bench?” She gave another smile as laughter spread across the room.

  “Let’s go, dear,” Alísun said. “You should rest this afternoon.” She offered her hand for Allie to climb down.

  “Thanks, Grandma.” Allie waved at all the kids beaming at her as she took an exaggerated step toward the elevators. Why is it always snakes? Her enemies always seemed to manifest in her visions as ugly, writhing, black snakes with creepy red eyes.

  Allie flashed one last smile as the elevator doors slid shut.

  “You are a natural with them,” Alísun said, hitting the button for the basement.

  “Where are we going?” Allie asked.

  “The warehouse. I hear it’s ten times the size of the yard back home. We’re going to go have a chat about your clairvoyance and that little freak out back there.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to come down to the warehouse yet. It’s so beautiful. And quiet.” Allie threw her head back, letting the sun warm her face. Acres of rolling meadow spread out before her with wildflowers painting the world in vivid colors. A tall, rocky mountain rose in the distance with thick forests surrounding its base. Allie caught a glimpse of a sparkling lake and waterfall in the distance, with cabins and trails winding in every direction.

  “Jayesh has kept the warehouse closed to the students and staff for now,” Alísun said. “Once we establish the new regime, we’ll open it back up. Before, this lovely place was used as both punishment and reward.”

  “Quinn and Santi had to run up this mountain every day for weeks,” Allie said. “Just to keep each other safe for one night.”

  “For reward, the young children of the Fold got to come here for an hour’s recess once a week.” Alísun shook her head in dismay. “They earned extra minutes here for good behavior. Can you believe that? Minutes.”

  “Once a week? That’s not a reward, that’s a tease. We should allow everyone to come here whenever they need to get outside and stretch their legs.”

  “You see the cabins over by the lake?” Alísun pointed as they walked in that direction. “That’s where Tessa used to train. She brought me down here a few days ago when she gave me a tour of the whole facility. She said there used to be rows of small ponds over by the cabins, but when she left, the man who lives here transformed the ponds into one big lake.”

  “Is he someone we can trust?” Allie asked.

  “Yes, Harold’s an old hermit who doesn’t want to be bothered. As long as he can continue to create this beautiful oasis as he sees fit, he doesn’t care who is in charge.”

  “This would make a great summer camp for the kids.”

  “They would love it. I think that’s a grand idea and a good way to illustrate to the kids and the parents the kinds of changes we intend to make.”

  “Just about everything we would need is already here. I’m sure we could set up a team and give them a budget to make it happen for this summer.” Allie walked ahead of her grandmother, inspecting the cabins and the fishing dock. Canoes stood in rows along the shoreline and an area near the waterfall was dedicated for swimming. It already looked like a camp.

  “You seem better here than back in the lobby,” Alísun said, following her out onto the dock.

  “It’s quieter here. It’s easier to think when there’s not so much going on around me.”

  “Your visions are so unlike mine.” Her grandmother came to her side, staring out across the crystal clear water. “I want to help you make sense of it, but I cannot fathom what it is like
for you.”

  “They’re everywhere these days.” Allie swept her hand across the lake. “Like ghosts demanding my attention at once. But they are so much stronger now. Not really ghosts anymore, but real people with defined faces and strong voices. They want to be heard.”

  “You’ve always kept them silent before,” Alísun said. “What’s changed?”

  “At first I thought it was Soma. It’s like walking into a field of angry vipers whenever I walk into a crowded room here. Sometimes literally. So much of the immediate future is entangled with everything going on now, it makes sense that Soma would intensify my visions.”

  “But?” Alísun prodded.

  “But it didn’t really change when I went home.” Allie turned to face her grandmother. “I think Darius’s Proving is the real culprit. We affect each other in so many ways; I guess I should have expected this, too.”

  “You’re right. I expected this, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon. Darius will be experiencing a lot of progress over the next year. It usually takes about that long for the dust to settle, so to speak. When he progresses, you progress. But you always do things faster than we expect.”

  “It’s terrible timing.” Allie squinted in the bright sunlight, trying to decide if the person she saw walking the trail between cabins was real or a vision.

  “I know we’ve been over this before, but tell me what you see,” Alísun said. “Help me understand the way your sight works.”

  “Well, it’s kind of like seeing into another dimension. Before, I just saw people and places as indistinct shapes. Like I was looking through an infrared lens, seeing the heat signature of the people around me. Blobs of yellow, red, green, and blue.

  “You’ve lost your grandma, dear. Infrared?” Alísun’s brow furrowed in confusion.

  “Uh, it’s a science thing I don’t really know much about, but you see it in movies a lot. It’s kind of a device that detects living things based on the levels of heat they give off.”

  “I see.” Her grandmother nodded uncertainly.

  “Anyway, not important since they’ve evolved. Before I was able to keep them locked in my peripheral vision, and I've always kept them silent, so I could function in my daily life. But all that is gone now. In the last few days, I’ve had very little control. It takes more effort to keep these visions locked away, and they just don’t stay there like they used to. There are too many of them, and they’re so real. But the information I should be getting from them is a snarled mess in all the chaos.”

  “You young Immortals are so impressive with your modern gifts. But it’s so difficult for the older generations to teach you. I am a powerful clairvoyant and prophetess. It’s absurd that I don’t have the skills to help my granddaughter.” Alísun’s voice took on an angry, frustrated tone.

  “Okay.” Allie kicked off her shoes and pulled her grandmother down to sit on the dock beside her. “There has to be a way for the old and young to bridge these gaps in knowledge. We can communicate better than this.” They let their feet dangle in the cool water lapping at the dock.

  “You’re right, let’s take a few steps back,” Alísun agreed.

  “When you see a vision, it’s prophetic. It comes to you in words, right?”

  “Yes, but there is a strong visual element to what I see, too. It can sometimes be more metaphorical than literal. Kassandre’s visions were always literal in the sense that she saw events unfold in a way she could understand, but for much of her life, she was powerless to influence what she saw. Until she bonded with your father.” Alísun smiled.

  “Really? Dad doesn’t talk about her much.” Allie leaned in closer, eager for more information about the mother she knew so little about.

  “Your father gave her balance. He is a dream walker, so he could observe her visions right along with her. He had a unique understanding with his own interpretation. Together, they were able to influence the things they saw. He is the reason why your parents were able to plan so much of your lives. Without Navid, I shudder to think of what might have happened to my girls.”

  Allie held her grandmother’s hand, breathing the fresh mountain air. Being here was good for her soul. She needed to make an effort to come here whenever the stress of her responsibilities got to be too much.

  “Did Kassandre’s visions always come to her as dreams?”

  “Yes and no. She experienced waking visions as often as she dreamed them at rest.”

  “That’s how my visions manifested at first,” Allie said. “Except I never know what they mean. So, imagine a typical waking vision. When I have those, it takes me out of my surroundings and places me into the vision. I don’t have a strong sense about what is happening in the present. If I was seeing my fiftieth birthday in Paris right now, I wouldn’t be aware of this dock or the cool breeze whistling through the trees. I would be in Paris.”

  “I’m with you.” Alísun nodded.

  “With the way my gift is evolving now, it would be like I am here having this conversation with you, fully aware of the beauty around us, but I’d also see a thin veneer of Paris and my birthday cake over there by the cabins. And my friends would there by the rows of canoes. But at the same time, I’m still sitting here with you, fully immersed in both moments. Now imagine that same scenario, times a hundred. There are all these moments demanding my attention at the same time. I can’t possibly process everything I’m seeing. So, I’ve learned to ignore it simply so I can function, but that system seems to be failing. Fast.”

  “I see.” Alísun frowned. “You poor thing. You must be losing your mind.”

  “Exactly.” Allie breathed a sigh of relief. “And now I have to go back up there and be the first princess, giving all those kids the attention they deserve. But right now, my gift wants me to see everything, and I don’t know how to do that at the same time I’m supposed to be running Soma. Suddenly, the visions are so real, Grandma. If it gets any more real, I’m never going to be able to distinguish reality from a vision. And with everything going on, I’m terrified I’m going to miss something vital. I have to get a handle on this.”

  “You’re absolutely right. We will keep working until we find an answer. This isn’t a question of understanding your clairvoyance. You can’t begin to face that until you’ve learned to … to process an incredible amount of information quickly.”

  “That’s what Graham thinks. I Skyped with him while I was home. It turns out he’s struggling with a very similar progression with his gift as well. He sees the world through tech lenses, kind of like augmented reality in the movies. It’s a lot for him to process, too, and it’s made his last year at MIT even more difficult. He’s going to come here to Soma after his graduation to focus on finding a solution.”

  “Well, then. I haven’t the slightest clue what augmented reality is, but we will just have to find you and Graham the techiest tech person out there and get them here to help you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You’re never going to convince me to keep running Soma on blood money.” Allie glared across the conference room table at Jayesh and Gregg. “We are not keeping the hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in our accounts right now. There is more money there than we could ever spend.”

  They were lucky to have it. Gregg discovered a young man among the Soma trainers who had a gift much like Graham’s. Gabe was able to hack the Soma accounts within hours after the takeover, moving the money to newly secured accounts Marcus wouldn’t be able to access. But that money belonged to the Soma slaves.

  “Allie, we have to think long term. We cannot afford to pay that kind of restitution to the freed slaves,” Gregg argued. “I agree, we should offer them something, but if we return their purchase price to them in full, we’ll be bankrupt in a decade. It’s going to take an enormous amount of money to keep this place running the way we want to.”

  “You can’t tell me that Tessa doesn’t deserve every penny of the fourteen million dollars Soma made when they s
old her to Vivian Dyson!” Allie leaned on her elbows against the cool surface of the conference table inlaid with a map of the world in black onyx against a sea of white marble. She traced the golden borders of New Zealand with her fingertip, wondering how she could have come so far in just a handful of years.

  “Of course, she does,” Jayesh said. “They all deserve it, but it just can’t be done. It isn’t feasible.”

  “Then let’s make it feas—”

  “I don’t want it.” Tessa stood, slamming her fist down on the table. “It’s not going to buy back the last four years of my life.” Taking a deep breath, she sat back down. “Keep` it for the new Soma and make this place better. Use it to keep what happened to me from happening to anyone else. I guarantee the other freed slaves will feel the same way. Some will take whatever you offer, but others won’t want anything to do with it. Allie’s right; it’s blood money, and I never want to see it.”

  “You will be getting some form of restitution,” Livia said. “It’s only fair.”

  Allie massaged the tight spot of tension at the back her neck, trying to pay attention, but she was struggling to divide her focus enough to keep her visions in check.

  “How about this?” Tessa leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. “Vivian paid us for our work. She treated us well to make us complacent, so we’d never want to leave. Never mind that we couldn’t leave—the perks were there to make us happy enough not to try. I made nearly a million dollars during my time with Vivian, but because we escaped, we didn’t get to take that with us. Pay us a fair wage for our time in captivity, and keep the rest to take care of these kids.”

  Gregg nodded. “That’s a good solution. A fair one. We could come up with an average dollar amount for each year in captivity and pay everyone based on that. That way we can control expenses, pay a universal restitution, and keep our doors open.”